


Mutatis mutandis

by redfiona



Category: X-Men: First Class - Fandom
Genre: Community: lgbtfest, Gen, Trans Character, late prompt response
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redfiona/pseuds/redfiona
Summary: Everybody wakes up the next day as a different sex. Some people freak out, some trans* people are very happy, and some people look in the mirror, shrug, and go on with their lives.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lgbtfest prompt - Any fandom, any characters, everybody wakes up the next day as a different sex. Some people freak out, some trans* people are very happy, and some people look in the mirror, shrug, and go on with their lives.

Alex was the first to notice, years in and out of juvy meant he woke up automatically at sun-rise. He didn't scream, or do anything like that. He just ran straight to the Professor's room, because, he thought, if anyone could explain this, it would be Prof. Xavier.

The problem was that Charles had a freak-out about it instead of having an answer (not *the* freak-out, that was Hank, about eight minutes later).

Eventually, almost everyone had assembled in the library. Hank had refused to come out of his room, but everyone else was there.

"What the hell happened?" asked Alex.

"I'm not sure." Said Charles. Which wasn't much of an answer. "It seems not to have affected non-mutants," Moira was still herself, and when she'd rung friends, nothing had happened to them. "It doesn't seem to have affected all mutants," Charles pointed at Raven.

"Oh no, it's got me too, I thought everyone would be happier if I looked like me and not like," Raven relaxed the shape she'd been holding. As she slowly turned blue from her head downwards, it became clear that her outward sex had changed. Her chest flattened and hips narrowed.

Charles stopped her before the change moved any further down. "I think you were quite right that clothed is better." Raven shook herself back into her normal form.

"Do we think it's *them*?" By which Alex meant Shaw and the others.

"I don't know." Charles knew that wasn't much of an answer either. He couldn't reach out with his mind to see if he could find Shaw without the threat of giving away their position to Miss Frost, and he knew they weren't ready for that confrontation yet. "I think the most sensible thing we can do is find out if other mutants are affected." Most of the people he and Erik had approached had told them to go away, several of them more forcefully than that. A few of the others had said 'thanks, but no thanks', and one, Dr. Celia Reyes, had said that when it all went wrong and they needed a medic, they should call her.

So he did. "Yes, hello. Dr. Reyes, Charles Xavier here. I'm not sure if you remember ..."

"Is this your fault?"

Dr. Reyes remembered him alright. "I take it from that that you're suffering from the same problem that we are."

"If you mean, did I wake up this morning and was suddenly a man, then yes. What did you do?"

"As far as I know we didn't do anything, I wanted to know if anyone was else was affected."

"Yes, yes, I am."

"Thank you Dr. Reyes. If I hear any news, I'll be in touch."

"You do that." She rang off.

The new information didn't help much.

"We are not the only ones with a problem. As Dr. Reyes is in New York, I think we can rule out local causes such as food contamination." They considered other possible causes, writing them up on a chalkboard as they went. Charles wished Hank were there, he had a brilliant mind for trouble-shooting.

They spent several hours at the board, not solid hours, they couldn't, after the first half an hour they'd already started to go back over causes they'd ruled out before, but Charles sat there and people came in and out of the conversation when they'd had ideas.

Knowing what had caused it was the first thing on Charles's mind because if they didn't know that they couldn't know if it was permanent or if there was a way to fix it. Erik had, of course, fixated on something different. "I know we still have our powers," Erik's first reaction had been to reach out for all the metal he could see. It was more panic than sound choice, but it reassured him more than anything else would have done. He could still manipulate metal and so everything would be alright. "But I wonder if they've changed at all."

Charles would, should, have helped him out with that testing, but he was still caught up in trying to figure out what had gone on. He had taken the whole thing less well than Erik or Raven had, Raven being able to be herself no matter what had happened to her body and Erik was happy as long as he still had his powers. Charles concept of self was grounded in who he had to face in mirror and right now, that wasn't who he was seeing. His discomfort in this body that was not his not being helped by being able to hear the screaming panic that Hank was in. He'd try and sort Hank out later, but as it was, he'd nothing but platitudes for Hank and he didn't think that would help.

Instead Erik seconded Moira and Raven to help him test his abilities, and to test Raven's, to check that everything was as it had been.

Charles thought Erik's choice of testing partner were probably for the best, because he really did need someone to go down and check on Hank but even he, and goodness knew he sometimes forgot about other peoples's feeling, knew that the wrong person to send down in this situation would be the girl Hank was in love with. Alex was also out on grounds of, well, Alex would say something and then Hank would never come out of his room. Charles sent Sean instead, because he at least had some sort of manners.

~~~~

Sean knocked on the door. "Hey, Hank, it's me, Sean. The Prof sent me down to check if you were alright." Which Hank wasn't, not that any of them, Raven notwithstanding, were.

Hank grunted or something like it.

"Hank, let me in, I'm not allowed back downstairs unless I've seen that you're alright." And hadn't done anything stupid. Not that Sean thought Hank would, but Sean had to assume that the Prof knew best.

"You'll only laugh."

"Hank, what the hell am I going to have to laugh at you about? It's not like we're not all going through the same thing." Except they weren't, not as far as Sean knew. Maybe it would have been easier if they were.

Hank peeked round the curtain of his four poster bed, looking completely distraught. Beyond that, he had a look that said 'how is this our lives?' Sean didn't have an answer for that.

Sean kept busy, spending the rest of the day shuttling between Hank and everyone else, because the Prof had a point and it was just a matter of time before Alex said something that really upset Hank.

~~~~

Charles woke up the next day hoping that everything would be back to normal. He'd known it wasn't a dream, no telepath ever confused dreams for reality, but he'd thought that maybe, maybe if they were lucky, whatever it was would pass the way an allergic reaction did.

He could tell it hadn't immediately after he woke. There were certain things he knew to expect from himself, and they hadn't happened. He still checked, of course, because hope sprang eternal, even when other things didn't, but no, he was still in the wrong body.

He'd learnt to damp down on his emotions, things had this tendency to go terribly wrong when he didn't control them, but that morning it was a close run thing. He wondered if part of the problem was that he'd always prided himself on being rational but he couldn't be rational about this. Raven was obviously an exceptional case, her mutation rendering this problem immaterial, but everyone else who was suffering the same problem was coping with it much better than he was. Charles wondered if it was because he'd spent so much time in his own mind, relying on his body to anchor him, that he didn't have a fallback when that failed him. He knew you couldn't run away from problems but running soothed him, dragging him out of his head for a while. Had this problem been anything else, he would have gone for a run to clear his mind, but now he couldn't trust to that because nothing felt quite right.

Charles stretched his powers, using them just enough to check that everyone was alright, or alive and breathing at least. He was worried about Hank, who was the only person who was dealing with this less well than he himself was. Charles had no idea what to say to Hank though, all he had were trite clichés he didn't believe himself. Because there was no way of knowing that everything would fix itself, that this would all go away as mysteriously as it came.

Still, hiding away in bed, however tempting the idea might have been, wouldn't help the situation either. He made sure to avoid the training room, as he could sense Alex practising down there, which was his version of a morning run.

Hank hadn't made an appearance since this all started. Sean was running between the kitchen and Hank's room or the lab with his meals, and carrying notes if Hank thought of anything he needed to communicate. It couldn't last though, there were things Hank wanted to say that he couldn't express properly on paper, and didn't think Sean could convey the information clearly, no matter how hard Sean tried. He sent Sean with a note saying the Professor was allowed to come down. It was an invitation that was deliberately narrow. Hank knew the Professor would say something stupid, but there'd be no malice. The knowledge didn't help a lot, whatever the Professor said would still hurt, but it helped enough.

Charles came downstairs to find Hank wearing his lab coat like a suit of armour. Hank looked tired, with red-rimmed eyes and hair mussed. "Have you even slept?" Charles had seen Hank after all-nighters before, but he didn't normally look like that, and it made Charles want to comfort him, but he knew that if he tried Hank would hate him for it, because no matter what he looked like at the minute, doe-eyed, bobbed hair and distressed, and very much Charles's type, Hank was still Hank. Something that became even more apparent when Hank started his explanation of what he thought had happened to them.

Sean had stayed in the lab, because it wasn't like he had anything better to do. It turned out that Hank had been right to get Sean to get the Prof to come down, because there was no way he'd have remembered all of what Hank was saying. It went far beyond his high school science classes.

Sean understood the gist of it, that whatever it was had caused their immune systems to attack the part of their X chromosomes that their mutation was on, and that it was wearing off. Hank had photos to prove it, pictures he'd taken of his own blood samples he'd done something to. It was the something where Sean lost the ability to follow what was going on. The Prof and Hank argued backwards and forwards about some of the technical details, about what this meant or that meant, but the short version was that they were going to be like this for another two to three days, and then change back.

It took one of those days for Sean to gather his courage. He'd never spoken about this with anyone else, tried to avoid thinking about it as best he could, especially with a telepath in the house, but having had three days like this, he couldn’t stand the idea of going back.

Hank was the one person who Sean thought might understand. He was the only one who'd ever shown anything like a desire to change himself, even if what Hank wanted to change wasn't anything like as much as what Sean wanted to change - who even noticed other peoples's feet anyway?

Sean still had no idea how to talk about it. "Hank, are you sure that this will wear off?"

"Yes." A distressed Hank was a short-tempered Hank.

"Is there any way, you know, to, maybe, stop it?"

Now Hank just looked confused. "I don't understand." In a moment of recklessness that reminded him of flying, Sean went for showing Hank what he meant. Sean started to unbutton his shirt.  
Hank tried to stop him. Alex had been flashing anyone he could for a laugh. He'd stopped quickly, because no-one was impressed, because Raven pointed out that she always had them, and Alex's usual accomplice, Sean, hadn't joined in for once. Alex couldn't figure out why.

"Sean, stop it, it's not like I've not got breasts at the moment too." Hank blushed and tried to look away.

"No, Hank, look!"

And Hank did. He couldn't help himself. And yet, instead of the breasts Hank expected to see, Sean was as flat-chested as Hank had been before all of this. "I ... wait ... um ... just let me work through this."

Sean didn't wait. He'd gone too far to wait now. "Sean is my middle name, I was named for my father's brother who died in the war. It always suited me more than my given name did."

"Then you're a ..."

Sean didn't want to hear it. "I want to stay this way. Is there any way to do that?"

Hank's face was contorted into a confused frown. Sean had to hope that it was the question, not anything else. So now he waited.

Hank didn't say anything, just stood there with his right arm across his body, and his left thumb rubbing up and down his philtrum like he was thinking, hard. And maybe he was.

"Okay. There's a thing. I might have something that might help. Only don't tell Erik. And don't tell Charles. In fact, it's best you don't tell anyone." Like Sean wasn't good at keeping secrets.

Hank took a vial of something from one of the refrigerators in the lab and put it down on the bench. "I have to know you're sure about this." Sean hadn't been more sure of anything in his life. "I've never tried this out on anyone. I ... I wanted to be certain before I tried it." Hank tried to explain the science, that it disrupted the X-gene by binding to it, that it might last forever or till tomorrow, all kinds of things. Sean couldn't quite follow, but listened anyway.

"I need to know you know what you're agreeing to. It might kill you."

"But it probably won't."

"It might make you seriously ill."

"But it probably won't."

"It might take away your powers."

That gave Sean pause. Which was stupid, because it maybe killing him hadn't. "But it probably won't." Having lived like this for three days, Sean didn't want to go back. The risk was worth it.

"If you're sure."

"I'm sure."

"Roll up your sleeve." Hank prepared the injection site and the injection. It was painful, but no more so than Sean's polio jab had been.

Nothing happened. Sean looked at Hank, staring at him, almost asking, "was that it?"

"I'm sorry. There's no way we'll be able to tell if it's worked until everyone else changes back."

Sean thought highly enough of Hank that he didn't think he'd just been injected with a placebo. But he'd expected more to happen. He'd expected to feel something, anything.

He spent the remainder of the waiting time with Hank in the lab. No-one else thought that it was odd, because Sean had been pretty much the only person Hank had let down there. Hank, meanwhile, used Sean as a guinea pig to try to explain the science behind what had happened and what was in the injection, and basically to ward off the cabin fever Hank was getting from being stuck in the lab or his bedroom for five days.

Sean woke early the next morning, morning six as Hank would have called it. He ate breakfast, mostly on his own. Nothing had changed with him, but he didn't know if that was because Hank's serum had worked, or if whatever it was still hadn't worn off. Raven came through the kitchen, grabbing some fruit before going, but it wasn't like Sean could tell anything from how Raven looked. Eventually, the Professor came down the stairs looking like himself. Relieved, and like himself. Which was a good sign as far as Sean was concerned.

Hank was the next to wake up. The lack of sleep had caught up with him in the small hours of the night so he'd finally slept, but being back to looking like himself, he'd finally left the lab no matter how worn out he still looked. Charles smiled at him. "I see that you're back with us. I'm going to presume that Alex and Erik are too, as Sean and I both appear to be ourselves."

Sean supposed the Prof could have scanned the house to check, but he'd profited from the Prof not doing that to him, so he wasn't going to complain. The Prof was proved right anyway, about five minutes later, when Alex whooped up the stairs, racing up from the bunker where he'd been gleefully using his powers back in his own body. He wanted to grab Sean so that they could go have some fun, because Sean had been no fun for this whole thing, which Alex was blaming on Hank and him being weird about it. Hank was interfering with his plans again, dragging Sean off for yet more tests.

"Come on Hank, he's not going to have any blood left. Take it from someone else." Alex tried to grab Sean as Hank took him down to the lab.

"Yeah, but at least I know he's housetrained." Hank and Alex bickering helped make everything feel more normal.

Hank did take some blood from Sean, not as much as Sean had been telling Alex, mostly just to check that his serum was fully binding. "So far so good."

Sean liked that Hank wasn't taking this any more for granted than he was, despite not having as much reason. Hank showed Sean that image he'd taken of the serum's active ingredient, it was a small thing, but more beautiful to Sean than diamonds.

"You're braver than I am. I've been putting off trying this because I wasn't sure it was safe." Hank paused. "You do know that your secret is safe with me, right. When I write this up, I'll be patient zero." And that was the thing, Sean did trust Hank to keep this to himself, because he'd suffered from Charles outing him and might just understand why this needed to be a secret.

Sean still hung out with Hank while they prepared for the inevitable confrontation against the others, because he knew that otherwise, even now he was man-shaped again, Hank would isolate himself, and really, everyone needed company sometimes. He thought Hank appreciated it, or at least the knowledge that the serum was still working.

**Author's Note:**

> End note: Can I just ask for your patience and handwaiving with the science?
> 
> I always loved the prompt, but couldn't think of a fandom where any character wouldn't react, because ... people do not respond well to change, especially major, sudden, unwanted, unexpected changes. But then I thought of the X-Men and, well, Mystique probably wouldn't care, because as long as she has her powers, it makes no never mind.


End file.
